CHAPTER XXXV

SOME RESULTS OF AMERICAN RULE

Having set forth at length what seem to me the more essential facts relative to the American occupation of the Philippines and the results of American rule, supporting my statements by a rather free use of documents chiefly drawn from the Insurgent records, I will briefly summarize some of the more important points which I have endeavoured to establish, lest my readers should not see the forest for the trees.

Independence was never promised to Aguinaldo or to any other Filipino leader by any officer of the United States, nor was there ever any effort to deceive the Filipinos by arousing false hopes that it was to be conceded.

The Insurgent force never coöperated with that of the United States. The two had a common enemy and that was practically all that they did have in common. Each proceeded against that enemy in its own way. Each ignored requests of the other relative to the manner in which it should proceed. The Insurgent officers planned from the outset to utilize United States soldiers in bringing about the termination of Spanish sovereignty in the Philippines, and then to attack them if practicable and necessary in order to oust the United States from the islands. If not, they planned to consider asking us for a protectorate or for annexation.

The temporary government established by Aguinaldo and his associates was not, in any sense of the word, a republic, nor was it established with the consent of the people. It was a military oligarchy pure and simple, imposed on the people by armed men and maintained, especially during its latter days, by terrorism and by the very free use of murder as a governmental agency. The conditions which arose under it were shocking in the extreme. Property rights were not respected; human life was cheap indeed; persons aggrieved had no redress, and there was hardly a semblance of a system for the administration of justice.

There were individual instances in which Insurgents and Insurgent sympathizers were treated with severity, and even with cruelty, by officers and soldiers of the army of the United States, but it is nevertheless undoubtedly true that never before have the officers and men of any civilized nation conducted so humanely a war carried on under conditions similar to those which prevailed in the Philippines.

Hostilities were deliberately provoked by the Insurgents, who had previously prepared an elaborate plan for a simultaneous attack on the American lines around Manila from within and without, and for the killing of all Americans, Europeans and American sympathizers among the Filipinos.

The war ended with a prolonged period of guerilla warfare, deliberately inaugurated by the Insurgents, which bred crime and struck at the very roots of good government.

At the earliest possible moment the Filipinos were given a share in the control of their own affairs when municipal governments were established, under military rule, by army officers. Many Filipinos who accepted municipal offices under the Americans paid for their courage with their lives, and a very large number saved their lives only by serving two masters. Because of the special conditions which prevailed, such persons were very leniently dealt with when their double dealing was discovered, and in the effort to afford adequate protection to those who had put their confidence in the United States, our armed forces were divided to an extent probably previously unprecedented in history, and more than five hundred separate garrisons were established.

The first Philippine Commission was appointed in the hope of bringing about a friendly understanding between Insurgent officers and the representatives of the United States, and for the purpose of gathering reliable information relative to people and conditions which might serve as a basis for future legislation for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the islands. As the result of the breaking out of hostilities before the commission reached its destination, its work was necessarily limited to the gathering of information and to efforts to promote the earliest possible establishment of relations of friendliness and usefulness between the two peoples.

The second Philippine Commission was endowed with far-reaching powers. Shortly after its arrival in the islands it became the legislative body, and proceeded gradually to establish civil government as rapidly as practicable in a country under military rule, many parts of which were in active rebellion.

This difficult undertaking was carried out with a minimum of friction between civil and military authorities. The latter were invariably consulted by the former before civil government was established in any given region, and their wishes in the premises were respected. The commanding general stated that the establishment of civil governments was a help to him in his work, and in accordance with his desires and recommendations they were established prematurely in three provinces, with the result that the temporary restoration of military government became necessary.

Under American rule there has been brought about in the Philippines an admirable state of public order, and life and property are to-day safe throughout practically the whole of an archipelago which, at the close of Spanish sovereignty, was harried by tulisanes, ladrones and Moros. There were also very extensive areas in undisputed possession of wild and savage tribes where governmental control had never been established, where a man was esteemed in proportion to his success as a warrior, and where property was likely to find its way into the hands of men brave enough to seize it and strong enough to hold it.

We have established friendly relations with the very large majority of the wild people and the numerous changes for the better which we have brought about in their territory have been effected practically without bloodshed except in certain portions of the Moro country. By effective legislation, strictly enforced, we have saved these backward tribes from the threatened curse of alcoholism.

Good order was established in Filipino territory through the admirable work of the United States Army, assisted toward the close of military rule by the second Philippine Commission, which did much toward securing the coöperation of the better element among the Filipinos.

Under civil control Filipinos and wild men have been utilized as police officers and soldiers in their respective habitats, and have been an important factor in bringing about present conditions. The Philippine Constabulary, recruited in part from Filipinos and in part from Moros and other non-Christian peoples, has not only proved a most efficient body for the performance of ordinary police work but has rendered invaluable assistance to other bureaus of the government; notably to the Bureau of Health and the Bureau of Agriculture for which it has effectively performed very important quarantine work. It has furthermore proved to be a reliable and most useful body in meeting great public calamities like those caused by the recent eruption of Tall volcano, and the Cebú typhoon.

Reforms of radical importance in the judicial system have been another important factor in making life and property safe, and have resulted in bringing even-handed justice within the reach of many of the poor and the weak.

We found Manila and numerous provincial towns pestholes of disease, while the death-rate of the archipelago as a whole was so high that its climate had gained an evil reputation.

We have given Manila a modern sewer system. We have supplied its people with comparatively pure drinking water from a mountain watershed in place of the contaminated water of the Mariquina River which they were formerly forced to use. We have steadily reduced the death-rate of the city, which is now a safe and healthful place of residence for all who will observe a few simple precautions.

In the provinces, some eight hundred and fifty artesian wells have brought pure water to hundreds of thousands who were previously compelled to depend on infected wells, springs and streams. By making many of the previously most unsanitary regions of the archipelago healthful we have conclusively demonstrated that the lack of necessary sanitary measures, not the character of the climate, was responsible for the conditions which formerly prevailed.

The islands were periodically swept by frightful epidemics of disease. We have eliminated smallpox, previously rightly considered an almost inevitable disease of childhood, as an important factor in the death-rate. We have practically stamped out cholera and bubonic plague. Years have now passed since there has been a wide-spread epidemic of disease among the inhabitants.

The United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service has not only thrown its protective line around the archipelago but has sent its outposts to important neighbouring Asiatic centres for the dissemination of disease, thus facilitating the exclusion from the archipelago of dangerous communicable ailments and preventing the introduction of pneumonic plague, the most fatal of them all. It would unquestionably have entered the islands had it not been stopped at quarantine.

We are giving humane care to a considerable number of insane persons who were previously chained to floors or posts.

The lepers of the islands have been isolated and are being well cared for. A few have apparently been permanently cured.

The scientific work of the insular government has been coördinated in such a way as to insure maximum efficiency at minimum cost. Not only has an immense amount of routine work been economically performed but there has been a large amount of original investigation, some of which has resulted in discoveries of far-reaching importance to mankind.

We have found the cause of beri-beri, have eliminated this disease from government institutions and from among persons subject to governmental control, and have shown the Filipinos how they may rid their country of it, and save money at the same time, by a slight change in their food.

We have found a specific for that horribly disfiguring disease "yaws," and have cured large numbers of persons afflicted with it, thus earning their lasting gratitude.

We have made pure food and pure drugs purchasable throughout a country which was formerly a dumping ground for products not allowed to be sold elsewhere.

We have not only made long strides in the improvement of sanitary conditions in the provinces but have brought skilled medical and surgical service within the reach of very large numbers of persons who formerly had none at all, successfully overcoming the previous universal prejudice against hospitals, to such an extent that those of the government are now thronged with Filipinos seeking treatment.

In doing these things we have had to combat almost unbelievable ignorance and superstition, the remedy for which is to be found, we hope, in the generalization of education which is rapidly taking place. The hundred and seventy thousand children, who formerly took advantage of the meagre educational facilities provided under the previous régime, consisting chiefly of very defective primary instruction, usually given amidst most unsanitary surroundings, and without adequate facilities of any sort, have been replaced by a happy throng numbering no less than five hundred and thirty thousand, who receive from well-trained teachers excellent primary and secondary instruction, both academic and practical. Through the school system we are generalizing the use of the English language which is to-day, after a decade and a half of American rule, spoken far more generally than Spanish was after it had been the official language of the country for three and a half centuries. In this way we are overcoming the very grave obstacle in the way of welding the numerous peoples of the Philippines into one which is presented by their lack of a common medium of communication.

At the same time we are teaching boys and girls the elements of good sanitation and right living. Girls are also being taught to cook, to sew, to embroider and to make lace. Both boys and girls are receiving instruction in gardening, and boys may learn wood working, iron working and other useful trades. Opportunities for higher academic work have been provided in provincial high schools, and at Manila in the Philippine Normal School and the University of the Philippines, while the Manila Schools of Commerce and of Arts and Trades afford ample opportunity for advanced work on industrial and commercial lines, and the Manila School of Household Industries fits women to go out into the provinces and start new centres for the manufacture of laces and embroideries.

We are educating a constantly and rapidly increasing number of highly trained nurses, physicians and surgeons.

The working forces of certain bureaus of the government have been utilized for purposes of special instruction in surveying, printing and binding, and forestry, and even the inmates of penal institutions are not forgotten, but have good schools provided for them.

Quite as important as the development of the minds of the young is the development of their bodies through the introduction of athletic games and sports, which have incidentally promoted intercommunication and mutual understanding between the several Filipino peoples. In many regions baseball is emptying the cockpits, and thus aiding the cause of good order and morality.

Educational work has not been limited to the Filipinos, but has been carried on among the children of the wilder tribes, many of whom are proving to be apt pupils and are making extraordinary progress in industrial work.

By educating the masses we are giving to the Filipinos proper, as distinguished from the mestizo politicians, the first opportunity they have ever had to show what is in them.

The means of the government are at present insufficient to educate all of the eight hundred thousand children who, it is believed, would attend school voluntarily if given the opportunity. The insular revenues are derived chiefly from import duties and internal revenue taxes, so that there is a very direct relationship between the amount of government receipts and the volume of business of the country. Careful attention has long been given to stimulating the development of the vast natural resources of the archipelago in order to increase the prosperity of the people and that of the government, which are inseparably united.

Owing to the breaking up of the land area of the country into a very large number of small units, water transportation plays an unusually important part in commercial development. More than two-thirds of the very long coast line has been surveyed, as have the waters adjacent thereto.

The former scarcity of lighthouses has been remedied. An admirable weather service gives due warning of the approach of dangerous storms, and travel and the transportation of freight by sea have thus been rendered safe.

The previous almost complete lack of good roads has been remedied by the construction of four thousand four hundred miles of well-built, admirably maintained highways in the lowlands, supplemented in the highlands of Luzón and Mindanao and in the lowlands of Mindoro and Palawan, by some thirteen hundred miles of cart roads and horse trails. Hundreds of thousands of small farmers, who previously had no inducement to raise more than their families or their immediate neighbours could consume, because they were unable to sell their surplus products, have thus been brought within reach of the market.

The hundred and twenty-two miles of railway which we found in 1898 have been increased to six hundred eleven.

The government has utilized its coast-guard vessels to build up new trade routes until they became commercially profitable, so that private companies were willing to take them over.

Agriculture, the main source of the country's wealth, was conducted in a most primitive manner, modern methods and modern machinery being practically unknown. Worse yet, it was threatened with complete prostration, owing to the prevalence of surra among the horses and of rinderpest among the horned cattle. At a time when great areas were lying uncultivated because of lack of draft animals, and when the horses and cattle of the archipelago seemed doomed to extinction, a vigorous campaign was inaugurated against animal diseases. It has been carried out in the face of manifold obstacles up to the present day, and is resulting in the re-stocking of the islands through natural reproduction and the safeguarding of the young animals. Strenuous efforts, made through the medium of the public schools and through demonstration stations, are bringing about a slow change in the previously existing antiquated agricultural methods, and the example set by Americans is leading to the gradual introduction of a considerable amount of modern farm machinery.

The placing of the currency of the country on a gold basis has been a powerful factor in promoting material prosperity, and together with the other measures previously enumerated, supplemented by favourable tariff legislation giving the Philippines a market in the United States, has led to an era of extraordinary commercial development.

There has been a very rapid increase in the trade between the Philippines and the United States, the former country purchasing from us, practically dollar for dollar, as much as it sells to us, and furnishing us tropical products of a sort which we should otherwise be obliged to buy from countries with which we have a trade balance on the wrong side of the ledger.

The Philippines have a potential source of great wealth in their fifty-four thousand square miles of forest. We have introduced a conservation system which, if maintained and developed, will permanently preserve the more important forests while at the same time facilitating the establishment of a great lumber industry. The free use of forest products from government lands for other than commercial purposes has been granted to the people.

In the face of quiet but determined opposition from the cacique class, material progress has been made in assisting the common people to become owners of agricultural land, while in spite of the restrictions imposed by unwise legislation, several modern agricultural estates have been established. They are not only serving as great demonstration stations, of far more practical value than any agricultural college could be at the present stage of development of the Filipinos, but have materially raised the daily wage of agricultural labourers in the regions where they are situated.

We have established an efficient civil service in which national politics have played no part, and appointments and promotion have depended on merit alone. This rule has been made to apply to Filipinos as well as to Americans, with the result that the former have for the most part been compelled to enter the lower grades because of defective preparation, but with the further consequence that they have been promoted as rapidly as the result of subsequent careful training has fitted them for advancement. The proportion of Filipino employees as compared with Americans has increased from forty-nine per cent in 1903 to seventy-one per cent in 1913.

We have given to the country religious liberty. We have also given it free speech and a free press, both of which have been shamelessly abused. We have created, prematurely in my opinion, a legislature with an elective lower house composed exclusively of Filipinos and having equal powers with the upper house in the matter of initiating and passing legislation.

I reserve for the following chapter a statement of the opportunities which we have given the Filipinos to participate in the executive control of their towns and provinces, and of the results of these experiments.

Never before in the history of the world has a powerful nation assumed toward a weaker one quite such an attitude as we have adopted toward the Filipinos. I make this statement without thought of disparaging the admirable work which Great Britain has done in her colonies, but on the contrary in the conviction that in some particulars we ourselves have gone too fast and too far, and as a result are likely in the end to have forcibly brought home to us the wisdom of making haste somewhat more slowly, and paying more heed to the experience of others, when dealing with new problems.

However, it will do those of us who thought that we were infallible, if such there be, a world of good to learn that this is not the case; and it will do our Filipino wards good to discover, one of these days, that we can, if necessary, take away as well as give.

Up to the present time our successes certainly over-balance our mistakes, and in my opinion we have just cause for pride in the results of our Philippine stewardship.

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